Celebrating the Success of Others is Important! {Why I Do What I Do}

It's back!  Another edition of "Why I Do What I Do!".

Today I'm sharing about my teaching belief that "Celebrating the success of others is important".  One way I do this is by passing out awards every Friday in my classroom.  The first two weeks or so, everyone is always hoping they will receive an award.  Sometimes there are hurt feelings at the beginning of the year.  But, in doing this every week and spending a bit of time explaining why each student is receiving an award, students not only learn that it's important to be happy for others when they are successful, but they also vicariously learn about desired classroom behaviors.  In fact, as the year goes on, students will come to me and say things like, "___ helped me this morning when I fell getting off the bus.  I think you should give her a kindness award on Friday".  And things like that make this gal's heart happy!

Friday always starts with kids walking in and checking the board to make sure I have the "Awards" card posted at the end of the day.  And, inevitably, two or three kids will ask throughout the day, "Are we having awards today?"  They LOVE this and look forward to it all week long.  On short weeks or Fridays when we have an assembly I do not pass out awards and they are always so bummed!

Every Friday I give out 5-6 awards for various things... sometimes it's academic achievement or super nice handwriting or kindness or good choices... it really depends on what has gone on in class during the week.

When I pass out the awards, I do it something like this...

"Today I have an award for a student who has struggled to meet their AR goal for the past two weeks.  He's (at this point all the boys are wondering who I'm talking about) had to miss a recess or two so he could get his goal met... but this week, he was a reading machine!  He was on fire!  I saw a book in his hand and his name in the AR testing list over and over all week long (now the kiddos are looking around to see who is grinning the biggest because he knows I'm talking about him)... so let's celebrate with ____ for his amazing work on his AR goal this week!" 

The kiddo comes up, we shake hands, I present the award, and everyone claps and cheers.  Then I move on to the next award.  This is SUCH a positive way to end the week and I love seeing my kiddos high-fiving and cheering for the person receiving the award.

I keep my awards in page protectors in a binder.  Each protector is numbered and then I keep a check-list of who has gotten each number and on which day.  Some kiddos do get many more awards than others throughout the year, but everyone will receive at least two or three during the course of the year.

You can click the pic above to download a free copy of this awards tracker so you can start a great tradition every Friday in your own classroom!

How do you teach your kiddos that celebrating the success of others is important?  I'd love for you to share in the comments below!

End of the Year Parent Survey Freebie!

I have four days left... and I'm getting a little sad!  I've had half of my people for two years now and I'm sooo going to miss them!

I'm working on wrapping up my end of the year stuff this weekend.

First on my list is to finish my classroom awards.  We have a general awards assembly as a school, but the awards are academic, attendance, and citizenship and I have a few kids who won't receive an award.  So, I always do awards in my classroom too after the assembly.  Everyone will get an award at that time.  I know it's important that kids understand that you have to work hard to get awarded, but they get to learn that lesson during the big assembly.  In my room afterwards, I want everyone feeling good and getting something!

Here are the awards I'll be passing out... I made awards for everything from academic stuff to kindness to sharing to having a clean desk to someone who always is humming or singing a tune to share their love of music with the class!

Check them out on TpT- I'm keeping them at a sale price until my last day of school!

Last week I sent home an end of the year parent survey to get some feedback on classroom things so I can plan for next year.  You can get a copy of the survey at my TpT or Teacher's Notebook shops for FREE!

Find it on TpT or on Teacher's Notebook

Most of my parents sent them back on Friday and they've given me some good feedback and some happy notes too!  :)

Monday is our "Homework Hall of Fame" pizza party for the students who were in the homework club every month for the year.  I'm so thrilled that, for the 2nd year in a row, 100% of my students had 100% homework completion for the year!  Now, that does mean that once in a while someone didn't do their homework but then did it the next night and returned it.  But I'm pretty psyched!  They couldn't WAIT for me to tell them who was invited to the pizza party... so I got to do a lot of "after we're done working quietly for the next 10 minutes, I'll let you know who is in the hall of fame"... sneaky sneaky!

Happy Saturday!

So TIRED, a Great Book, and a Freebie!

I am EXHAUSTED! Having a week off and then going back to work has kicked my butt!

My kiddos have been amazing and I have gotten a TON of good teaching in the past two days. Today we started collecting research for a weather report. They are working in small groups and they were buzzing away with interesting facts and highlighting like crazy! :)

 

 

We're also working on persuasive writing AND reviewing main idea this week. Yikes, I know. BUT... I found this great book called A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea and we used it today to, not only identify the author's purpose and the effectiveness of his argument, but also to locate main ideas and details.  They *so* got it.  We'll see if I can strike gold again tomorrow with main idea in a non-fiction text.




I'm posting my fillable end of the year awards pack on TpT and Teacher' Notebook tonight. It has 40 awards that are fillable... so you don't have to write everyone's name out if you don't want to. There are awards for good friends, good partners, good spellers, growth in reading and math... and some unique awards too- "No Dust Bunnies" for kids who keep a neat and tidy area, "Marvelous Musician" for that one who is always humming or singing a tune, and even a "No Peeping" award for that kiddo who is always so quiet!

You can download the perfect attendance award for free at my TpT shop- just click the link below!

TpT (for the freebie!)          Teacher's Notebook

Check back in later this week for a great giveaway!!!!!!!  My kiddos are currently testing out a product and will be writing persuasive pieces to review it and I'll give you one for free!  (Actually, Learning Resources will... but I'll do the giveaway!!!)

The linky party for split/multi-age classrooms is still open... I hope you'll link up!

Friday Awards

I had a lovely new teacher friend e-mail to ask me for more info about my Friday Awards and I thought others might be interested too!

So, every Friday at the end of the day my kiddos get to do the free choice that they have earned for the week and right before free choice, I pass out awards.

Every week, 2 kids get a "Buggy for Books" award for good choices during Daily Five and one student gets my "Cowpoke of the Week" award which is essentially student of the week. I also give out three to four other awards which vary from week to week. Sometimes I will see a student being a good friend during the week and I will award them or a student might do a great job of picking up the floor at the end of the day so they get a citizenship award for keeping our classroom beautiful. I also may give an academic award to someone who struggles with spelling but got all the words right on the test or did an awesome job on the math test for the week. I also have a collection of award bracelets from Really Good Stuff and their "Be a Star With Good Manners" set which is on clearance right now and super cute! So, I give those out as well. If a kid earns the "Be a Star..." they keep it on their desk for a week and return it to me the following Friday.

When I pass out awards, I am quite wordy (imagine that!) with the explanation of why the particular student is receiving the award and then I reveal who the award goes to. Everyone claps and cheers while that student comes up, gives me a good handshake, and accepts their award.

It probably takes 5 minutes each week and the kids SOOOOO look forward to it. When they come in on Friday, they always look to see if the "awards" card is on the schedule for the day and on the rare weeks when I don't do awards (short week, I've been absent for a few days), they are always super bummed.To keep track of the awards, I have them in a binder inside sheet protectors. Each sheet protector is numbered and I have a tracking sheet with each kids' name across the side and each awards' number across the top. Then I just write in the date that the student receives whichever award. This year I will be printing out a variety of the awards at my TpT store just to add some variety and keep them excited to see what the awards will look like from week to week!

I also have a "MEGA Pack of Awards" for sale at Teacher's Notebook- this file is $8.00 and has over 30 different awards inside!  It's at TpT too!

Each week some of my awards are truly based on merit from the week, but I always go down my list and look for one or two students who haven't received an award in the past few weeks and make sure I come up with something for them.This has been an extremely positive thing in my classroom. It gives us something to look forward to on Friday and the kids get so jazzed to try and think about who I might be talking about. It's really cool to be explaining why I'm about to give an award and have them figuring out who I'm talking about!

Below I've attached my tracking form for the awards. I've left it fillable for you too so be sure to download it in Adobe! If you download it, please leave a comment! :)

Classroom Awards Freebie

I was just working on this item for The Teaching Oasis and figured I'd put it up here for you all to grab if you'd like!

I have many themed awards available on my Teacher's Notebook shop. I give out awards every Friday in my classroom for a variety of things: good choices, academic performance, friendship... I give out 5 to 7 awards each week and my kiddos really look forward to finding out who is going to get an award.

I really play it up and we do big clapping, hand shaking, and I make sure I am very thorough in explaining why I chose each student for their award to help the whole "vicarious learning" of expected behaviors.

Anyway, I've always used store bought awards in the past, but this coming year I will be using the different themed awards just to keep things spiced up. I know my kiddos will love seeing the different awards as the year goes on.

SO... here's a baseball themed award for you for giving to someone who has really had a "home run" week or made a "home run" choice! Please let me know what you think!

For some reason, the image of it isn't formatted correctly, but when you download it, it will look right in Adobe. I've been tinkering with it for a while and can't figure out why it looks weird in Google Docs. Any tips?

Don't forget to head on down to my giveaway post... 4 winners will be announced on Wednesday!